Golf ball-sized hail and destructive winds ripped through north Phoenix on Wednesday, smashing windows, denting cars and leaving a nearby Family Dollar and surrounding homes with visible damage. The storm hit hardest around 19th Avenue and Peoria, where one resident said she took cover in a stairway while glass flew through her home.
Christina Gonzales said the hail was so large it filled her hallway and rattled the walls before windows burst. She said she could hear the ground shaking and watched glass shoot down the hallway after a bedroom window was broken. By the time the storm passed, her home had holes punched into its side, the floor was covered in glass and several nearby homes had been hit the same way.
The damage gives the strongest picture yet of what the storm left behind in that part of Phoenix: not a broad, citywide shutdown, but a sharp pocket of destruction concentrated in one neighborhood. Cars parked under cover were not spared. Gonzales said even with her vehicle under a carport, hail broke pieces of it and left a string of dents across the body. Jocquil Robinson said the hail hit her car so hard it felt like someone had struck it with a hammer again and again, and she now needs a new windshield.
That local damage unfolded while severe weather spread across Arizona, bringing threats of damaging winds, large hail, tornadoes and flooding through Thursday evening. Northern Arizona faced its own round of severe weather on Wednesday, with heavy rain, golf ball-sized hail and multiple tornado warnings affecting Flagstaff and surrounding areas. In Phoenix, the destruction described so far came from hail and wind, not from a confirmed tornado.
For Gonzales, the storm was over in minutes, but the repair work will last much longer. Her home needs fixed windows, repaired siding and cleanup from shattered glass, and the cars in the neighborhood will need attention too. What remains unclear is whether Wednesday’s warnings across Arizona stayed just that in the Phoenix area, or whether any tornado ever touched down nearby.
